New Voice

I wrote, in the first of these posts on Carver, that I would address the question that Eileen Battersby was moved to ask, upon her reading of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, and Beginners, side by side – why Carver allowed Lish to cut the book in the way that he did, why he didn’t fight for the original version of the book. It is a somewhat naïve question, and there are a number of answers, or a number of aspects to the answer. One I have addressed – some of the cuts worked. There is, or should be, nothing unusual in this, it does not mean that the author is not as good as we thought he was, it just means that the editor is doing his job. (continue reading…)

Reading the Carver and Lish versions side by side proves an exercise as irritating as it is interesting: one wonders at how Lish could possibly justify what is best described, solely on the comparative textual evidence supplied here, as a slash and burn approach to editing. (Eileen Battersby, ‘Raymond Carver in his Own Words’ Irish Times, Sat Oct 31 2009) (continue reading…)